POISONING

Poisoning occurs when substances harmful to the normal functioning of the body are swallowed, inhaled, absorbed into the skin or injected. Signs that poisoning has occurred include abdominal pain, nausea, vomiting, drowsiness, burning pains from the mouth to the stomach, difficulty in breathing, congestion in the chest, headaches, ringing in the ears, blurred vision and sudden collapse. If possible the type of substance which has been ingested should be determined before giving first aid. Vomiting should not be induced if corrosive or petroleum based substances have been swallowed, nor in cases where the source of poisoning is unknown.

Food poisoning or gastroenteritis is usually caused by bacteria which inflame the lining of the stomach and intestines. The bacteria salmonella and staphylococcus are among the most common culprits and their growth is encouraged by reheating or half cooking food. It is important to practise good personal hygiene, especially washing hands, when handling food and to keep utensils and food preparation areas clean. Frozen food should be defrosted properly before cooking and not refrozen after it has thawed out. Previously reheated food should be cooked at a high temperature. Hot, cooked food should not be left in a cooling oven or other warm place. Bacterial growth develops. Food poisoning also occurs with contaminated seafood.

Symptoms of food poisoning are vomiting, diarrhoea and abdominal cramping, sometimes accompanied by sweating and fever. Diarrhoea and vomiting can lead to fluid loss, so dehydration may follow.

To treat food poisoning, fluid should be replaced by drinking small amounts of water, flat lemonade or diluted fruit juice frequently. Often the stomach will not tolerate solid foods. Taking garlic capsules can help fight infection. Peppermint tea is helpful in cases of nausea.

Poisoning can also occur as a result of absorption of various toxic metals in the environment. Lead, cadmium, mercury and aluminium are widely used by industry and our environment is now permanently polluted by them. These metals cannot be biodegraded into the environment. Lead poisoning can be caused when sanding off old lead based paint during renovations. The bioflavonoid, quercitrin, contained in the juice of citrus fruits, is a good chelating agent for lead, and gradually removes it from the body.

Cadmium is found in tobacco and cigarette paper and in superphosphate fertilisers. Usually found in conjunction with zinc, the ratio of cadmium to zinc is much higher in refined flour and white bread than in the same wholewheat products. Eating wholewheat products and not smoking reduce exposure to cadmium. Vitamin C, glutathione and the trace element selenium all help to alleviate cadmium toxicity.

Mercury is another highly poisonous metal. Apart from pollution of the environment, the consumption of seafoods and fish is a major source of mercury. Mercury is concentrated in algae in the ocean and becomes progressively more concentrated as it progresses up the food chain. Selenium is a natural defence against mercury. It is found in wheat which is grown in selenium rich soils.

During the 1970s evidence emerged that aluminium could be harmful to humans when people in Scotland using home dialysis for kidney failure suffered a type of dementia which was traced to the town water supply which was being used in the dialysis and which had been clarified with alum. There has been some evidence to link aluminium with Alzheimer’s disease, but this is still controversial. The consumption of aluminium is increased when food is prepared in aluminium utensils.

Some herbs can cause poisoning when taken in large amounts. It is therefore important to consult a qualified herbal practitioner when taking herbal remedies.

Water contamination by algal blooms, becoming more common with the pollution of our freshwater lakes and rivers, is another source of poisoning. Microcystis, a type of blue-green algae, produces hepatotoxins which cause bleeding and breakdown of the liver, sometimes inducing tumours. In 1981 several people in Armidale, New South Wales, showed signs of liver problems after drinking water from a reservoir contaminated by microcystis blooms.

*33\69\2*

JAMES’S REQUEST: DON’T ‘PRESCRIPTIONIZE’ ST JOHN’S WORT

James, a 50-year-old professional, wrote to me as follows:

I have had one form or another of depression for over 10 years. My depression has greatly affected my life in many ways. Most notably, my relationship with my wife has suffered and my relationship and reactions to daily work circumstances have been greatly and negatively affected. Many of my attempts to deal with my depression failed.

James describes how he first underwent six months of psychotherapy, which was of no help, followed by a course of Lustral, which helped his depression slightly but caused him chronic diarrhoea, a liability far greater than its minimal benefit in relieving his depression. After he broke his foot, this side-effect became even more inconvenient as he had difficulty getting to the toilet in time. He decided to discontinue the medication and his depression returned with full force.

After doing some research on the herb, James decided to take St John’s Wort on his own; within six weeks of starting to take 300 mg three times a day, his feelings of depression began to subside. ‘My depression is now manageable and I would have to say almost non-existent,’ he concludes. T hope St John’s Wort remains available without a prescription and that the … medical professionals do not attempt to “prescriptionize” it… I hope my short personal history regarding my depression and travels towards St John’s Wort will help to keep it available to the general public’

*10\75\2*

ALCOHOLISM

We are so imbued with psychological explanations of alcoholism that it seems strange to consider this problem as related to food or chemical susceptibility. Frequently, however, an alcoholic is not a mentally sick person, in the conventional sense, but a very advanced food addict. In fact, alcoholism could well be called the acme, or pinnacle, of the food-addiction pyramid.

It is usually assumed that the alcoholic craves the ethyl alcohol in his drink. In most discussions of the problem, however, a significant fact is overlooked: few people would choose to drink pure ethyl alcohol, even if given the chance. Alcohol is almost invariably found mixed with other ingredients or fractions, many of them related to common foods. Starting in the mid-1940s, I began to accumulate evidence that it was principally these foods, rather than the alcohol itself, to which many alcoholics were addicted.

This insight was related to developments in food allergy. It was Herbert J. Rinkel, the same man who discovered “masking” and “unmasking” of food allergy, who first diagnosed allergies to corn, in the 1940s. I confirmed Rinkel’s observations in my patients, and together we published a series of lists of foods containing corn or corn products.

Allergy to corn turned out to be the most common food allergy in North America. Why, then, had its discovery waited until the 1940s, years after the other common allergies were described? The answer lay in the very fact of corn’s popularity. Because it was present in practically every meal in one form or another, obvious or disguised, it was extremely difficult to unmask. It was only when we had compiled a fairly complete list and ferreted out the corn in numerous products, in the form of corn syrup, corn starch, corn oil, and so forth, that we could perform adequate tests.

Soon after this, I began to notice that many of my alcoholic patients had corn allergies. Some patients, for example, told me that they became drunk on only one or two glasses of beer or a couple of shots of bourbon. Such patients were invariably highly susceptible to corn or to other ingredients in these beverages, such as wheat or yeast. It dawned on me that it might be these substances, rather than the alcohol per se, which perpetuated the craving for alcoholic beverages and which caused the bizarre behavioral changes associated with alcohol consumption. Since alcohol is rapidly absorbed into the bloodstream, it was likely that these food fractions were rapidly absorbed along with it, creating problems for the susceptible.

*62\110\2*

THE BASIC CONCEPTS OF ALLERGIES: COMBUSTION PRODUCTS OF FUELS

Another serious problem is posed by the combustion products of home fuel systems. This source of danger is largely dependent on the type and location of the furnace, rather than on the type of fuel used.

The warm-air furnace is most frequently implicated as the source of chronic illness. When a chemically susceptible patient moves out of a home with such a furnace and into an ecologically sound environment, he often experiences an improvement in health. Returning to the home heated with warm air similarly may result in a decreased level of health.

The furnace of a warm-air system may pollute the air of the basement in which the furnace is located by releasing combustion products each time it is turned on. Leaks in such systems are common, and warm-air furnaces produce more dust and general agitation of the environment than some other types of systems. This is complicated by the fact that the warm-air system forces heated air throughout the whole house, thus naturally spreading dust and fumes.

Chemically susceptible people in homes with warm-air heat react with remarkable rapidity to the turning on of the heat. In fact, they begin to develop symptoms more quickly, sometimes, than the fumes could possibly spread from the basement. A psychological reaction? Not necessarily. Upon investigation, it was found that these patients were also susceptible to dust, a common source of allergic reactions; any dust which landed on the hot furnace was burned and then spewed in minute particles around the house. This “fried dust” was then stirred up every time the furnace was activated, and spread more quickly than the fumes.

The location of the furnace can be particularly important. A person who lives directly above a furnace is more likely to feel its effects than one who is sleeping in an area removed from the source of heat. The worst housing arrangement is probably the ranch-style house, with the furnace right in the center of the main floor. The next worse is to have an open utility room on the same floor as the living quarters. Either of these designs will subject the inhabitants to a daily dose of pollutants every time the furnace starts up.

Essentially, the only completely safe way to handle a furnace is to put it outside the house. It can be placed in a garage, in a separate room between the house and the garage, or in a separate area adjacent to the house which can only be entered from the outside. The only opening between this room and the house itself should be a well-insulated hole through which the hot water or steam pipes pass. Once the heating is thus arranged, it does not really matter if one uses coal, oil, or gas, as long as warm water or steam central heating is employed to convey the heat.

The gas range is the most common source of indoor pollution, but the most dangerous is probably the unvented gas-burning room wall-heater. Although this pernicious device is becoming less common, it is still found throughout the American Southwest. It is certainly ironic that people like Ellen Sanders should flee to the land of sunshine only to find a worse source of pollution in their new homes.

*32\110\2*

DYSLEXIA IN CHILDREN

Dyslexia, also known as “developmental dyslexia” or “specific developmental dyslexia,” is a type of learning disability that affects a child’s ability to learn to read. It is more common in boys than in girls. It’s not known exactly what causes the problem. Dyslexia often runs in families, but no specific genetic defect has been found to account for it. Some children with dyslexia may have had an accident that caused an undetected brain injury, but others have no such history. It is known, however, that dyslexia is not a form of mental retardation. And dyslexia is not related to low intelligence, physical handicaps, cultural disadvantages, low social or economic status, or brain damage.

A child with dyslexia often has no difficulties until entering school. Then the child finds that he or she cannot do things that other children can do easily. This experience can be embarrassing and painful. The child often finds it impossible to explain the problem and may become so frustrated that he or she either disrupts classes or becomes overly quiet and withdrawn. Other children may brand the dyslexic child as “stupid”; teachers and parents may consider the child lazy or unmotivated. The dyslexic child may, in fact, be very intelligent and may be trying extremely hard to learn to read. Pressure from teachers and parents to “work harder” can be confusing and frustrating and can lead to anger and rebellion. Some children with dyslexia find other activities that they can do well, such as sports or music. This may help them to adjust and feel more comfortable.

*57/84/5*

SEX AS AN AGE EXTENDER: BOP TILL YOU DROP

There are two ways of looking at the picture. First, robust sexuality keeps you in a better position to stay disease-free. Second, avoiding disease-especially cardiovascular disease and diabetes-is the best thing you can do for your long-term sex life. So not only is sex healthy but also health is sexy.

And while abundant sex won’t guarantee that you live to be 96, consider this advice from our experts. As you’re preparing to live into your nineties as a result of other information you’ve gleaned from these pages, schedule in enough sex time.

You’re going to want it for the same reasons you want it now. It’s a way of having special intimacy with your partner, it’s an excellent form of relaxation, and it’s the best outlet for your horny desires.

“There’s no specific decline in libido with age,” says Alan Brauer, M.D., founder of the Brauer Total Care Medical Center in Palo Alto, California, and co-author of ESO: The New Promise of Pleasure for Couples in Love. “Sexual interest doesn’t change, even in men in their eighties and nineties.” And even at that age, you’ll probably be not only willing but also able. “Erection capacity in healthy men should remain-in fact, does remain- into their nineties,” Dr. Brauer says.

The key word there is healthy. Age per se doesn’t wilt your weapon, no matter what you’ve heard to the contrary. But disease does.

“The graph that shows progressive increases of erectile dysfunction with advancing age is from data taken from hospital populations, people with vascular disease, heart disease, diabetes, alcoholism, and so forth,” Dr. Vinik points out. “You take a population of healthy aging people, and that’s not going to occur.”

*65/36/5*

BREAST LUMPS: GOING HOME AFTER OPERATION

Some time after your operation you will be visited on the ward by a hospital doctor to check that all is well.

Before you are discharged from hospital, the nursing staff will need to be sure that you will be able to manage. If you do not have help at home, and you are concerned about managing on your own, do tell one of the nurses before your operation so that some arrangement can be made for you. For some people, such as students who are returning alone to student accommodation, or elderly women who live on their own, a longer stay in hospital may be necessary until they are better able to cope.

By the time you are discharged from hospital you should have only slight pain or discomfort, your wound will be healing, and any drains will have been removed.

Driving

You should not drive yourself home after your operation, and should probably avoid driving for at least 2 weeks. Your car insurance is likely to be invalid for at least 48 hours after a general anesthetic: you may feel all right, but your reactions in an emergency would be slower than normal.

Even if you have not had a general anesthetic, do not drive until you are sure you can make an emergency stop without being hindered by pain from your wound. If you are in any doubt, your GP will be able to advise you about this.

Discharge letter

Before you leave hospital you will be given a letter to take to your GP’s surgery. This will contain a report of the operation and anything your GP may need to know about your treatment, and should be delivered as soon as possible – on your way home from hospital if this is feasible. The letter may be posted to your GP if you leave hospital before it has been written.

Follow-up clinic visits

Before you leave the hospital, nursing staff will arrange your next clinic visit – within a week or two of your operation. Time will be allowed for the results to be received from the examination of your breast tissue which always follows an operation on the breast.

If the stitches in your wound are non-absorbable, these will either be removed at the clinic visit or, if nursing staff think your wound will have healed sufficiently beforehand, you will be asked to make an appointment at your health centre or GP’s surgery so that they can be removed there.

Although the anxiety you and your family will feel while you await this next visit to the clinic is well understood by the nursing and medical staff, they must be sure that the results from the laboratory will have been received first.

Visit from the breast care nurse

If your hospital has a specialist breast care nurse, she will visit you on the ward before you leave. Do tell her if you are concerned about anything, or if there is anything you do not understand. She may be able to arrange a date to visit you at home if you would like her to do so, and will probably continue to see you as often as necessary, either at home or in her clinic.

*43/39/5*

WOMEN’S HEALTH: CONDITIONS CONFUSED WITH ENDOMETRIOSIS

Many of the symptoms of endometriosis are also the symptoms of other conditions – particularly other gynecological conditions – and therefore endometriosis is easily confused with them. These include pelvic inflammatory disease (PID), irritable bowel syndrome, ovarian cysts, appendicitis, ectopic pregnancy and occasionally cancer.

Pelvic inflammatory disease

Pelvic inflammatory disease, often known as PID, refers to any infection of the pelvic organs including the ovaries, fallopian tubes, uterus and cervix. Symptoms may include painful menstrual cramps, pain during or after intercourse, bleeding between periods, painful bowel movements or urination, generalized pelvic pain, lower back pain, nausea, fatigue, slight temperature and infertility.

PID is the condition which is most commonly confused with endometriosis when the diagnosis is made without the use of a laparoscopy because the symptoms of the two conditions are so similar. However, PID is caused by bacteria and it can be successfully treated with antibiotics. If antibiotic treatment fails to relieve the symptoms, further investigations should be carried out.

Irritable bowel syndrome

The term irritable bowel syndrome is sometimes used to describe a range of bowel symptoms when no other diagnosis can be found. The symptoms may include chronic lower abdominal pain which may be relieved by a bowel action, bouts of diarrhea and constipation, flatulence (wind), straining to have bowels opened, bloated abdomen, chronic backache, lethargy, nausea and heartburn.

Many women are diagnosed as having irritable bowel syndrome before endometriosis is finally diagnosed.

Simple ovarian cysts

A cyst is a growth that contains fluid and is enclosed by a membrane. There are many types of ovarian cysts, the most common are follicular and luteal cysts. A follicular cyst is a fluid-filled cyst which has developed from an ovarian follicle that has continued to grow and enlarge. A luteal cyst is one which has developed from a corpus luteum which has enlarged and become filled with fluid or, occasionally, blood.

The symptoms of ovarian cysts include abdominal pain on the affected side, pain with intercourse, abdominal swelling, fullness or discomfort and irregularities in the menstrual cycle. If the cyst is large it may put pressure on the adjacent organs, such as the bowel or bladder, which in turn may cause some discomfort with bowel movements or when passing urine.

Many follicular and luteal cysts disappear within a few weeks as they are reabsorbed by the body. If the symptoms persist, a laparoscopy is the only way to distinguish between an ovarian cyst and an endometrioma.

Acute appendicitis

Acute appendicitis is an inflammation of the appendix and the symptoms include sudden and severe right-sided abdominal pain, nausea and vomiting, malaise and a raised temperature.

The symptoms of acute appendicitis are sometimes confused with those experienced by a woman with endometriosis where a large cyst, usually an endometrioma, has burst.

Ectopic pregnancy

An ectopic pregnancy occurs when a fertilized ovum implants itself in an abnormal location outside the uterus, usually within a fallopian tube, and continues to develop. Because the fallopian tube cannot expand to accommodate the developing foetus the tube eventually ruptures. The symptoms experienced when an ectopic pregnancy ruptures a fallopian tube include severe left or right-sided abdominal pain, nausea and/or vomiting, vaginal bleeding and internal bleeding which can lead to shock.

The symptoms of a ruptured ectopic pregnancy may sometimes be confused with those experienced by a woman with endometriosis who has a ruptured large endometrial cyst. A diagnostic laparoscopy is necessary to determine the correct diagnosis.

Cancer

The two main forms of cancer that may possibly be confused with endometriosis are ovarian cancer and rectal cancer. The symptoms of ovarian cancer include pelvic pain, weight loss, weakness and anemia, while the symptoms of rectal cancer include constipation, bleeding from the rectum and backache.

However, ovarian and bowel cancer are very rarely confused with endometriosis. If mere is any possibility that you may have cancer, diagnostic tests will be carried out quickly and thoroughly.

*21/41/5*

PREVENTIVE MEDECINE: OBESITY

It is impossible to be sure what proportion of the western world is obese but current estimates suggest that about 30 per cent are ‘clinically’ overweight. That obesity increases one’s chances of suffering from diabetes, heart attacks, gall-stones, hiatus hernia, cancers of all kinds, painful feet, arthritis of the hips and knees and several other conditions is now beyond dispute. It shortens life and reduces the quality of life for countless millions of people. Obviously obesity is a terrible health and social problem.

In the 1920s obesity was rare in African rural peoples and a 1960 study suggested that low body weights were lifelong in rural Zulu men. There is now overwhelming evidence that in certain ways the control mechanism of body weight somehow breaks down in an affluent society. Individuals in primitive societies have a kind of automatic regulator which controls the amount of effort they spend searching for food and the amount of food they consume. According to one world expert, ‘Supermarket Man has no such automatic facility.’

An adult man, wherever he lives and however he eats, who eats 1 per cent more energy every day than he expends accumulates 1 kg of fat per year. At 30 such a man would weigh 30 kg (66 lb) more than someone who had been in good energy balance for a lifetime. Obesity is a real hazard to hunter-gatherers because it slows them down, affecting their ability to catch prey and to escape animal predators. So in survival terms it pays the hunter-gatherer to keep slim. Such peoples get their food mainly from plants, and individuals spend 2-3 hours a day gathering food, three-quarters of which is supplied by women and children gathering and one quarter by men hunting. Many hunter-gatherers live long enough to become obese but they do not do so. In one study of such a group 7 per cent of the men were over 65 but they were all slim.

The first agricultural revolution, in about 10,000 BC, changed things radically for most of the world’s population as man began to farm cereals and to store food. The diet of today’s peasant agriculturalist has changed little since this time. Although food shortages occur in developing rural peasant communities, resulting mainly from population density and poor soil fertility, competent scientific observers say that even where the population is not dense, the soil is fertile and there are two harvests a year, body weight remains low throughout adult life.

Pastoral peoples plant no crops but raise animals and eat meat, blood and milk. Studies show that their blood cholesterol levels remain low despite the high intakes of animal fat and cholesterol, and that obesity is rare.

The second agricultural revolution started in Europe towards the end of the eighteenth century and crop rotation and fertilizers, together with better machinery and animal husbandry, changed western eating habits totally. The upper classes became wealthy; meat, butter and milk could be consumed throughout the year; and sugar intake went up, as did that of alcoholic drinks. Obesity suddenly became extremely common in the upper social classes, towards the end of the seventeenth century and even more so in the eighteenth century. Portraits of even quite young people of the time show double chins.

With the coming of the Industrial Revolution in the nineteenth century the production of goods and wealth really took off. This enabled radical changes in the production, storage and transport of food. Dietary fibre began to be milled out of bread-the staple diet of the masses. Salt, sugar and fat intakes rose and the consumption of starchy foods fell. Fruit and vegetable intakes rose steadily. People got less exercise, as machines began to do the work. Slowly food became so plentiful, even for the masses, that people began to eat snacks between meals as well as regular meals-themselves a luxury for many until 200 years before.

So why is obesity so common in the West and hardly ever seen in non-westernized peoples? The main answer is that our food has radically changed in character-it is not simply that we eat too much of it, as was previously thought. Over half the energy in the food of a hunter-gatherer or peasant agriculturalist comes from high-starch foods. Such a diet eaten even ‘to excess’ does not cause obesity, partly because it is almost impossible to eat an excess, so bulky and filling is it. At least two-thirds of the energy in a western diet comes from fibre-free fats and sugars and low-fibre cereal products. Undoubtedly, there are other factors in the production of obesity but, looking at populations overall, food is undoubtedly at the heart of the problem. That westernized people can slim by adopting a high-fibre (rich in unrefined carbohydrate) diet is no longer in doubt; and the observation that slim, rural dwellers in non-westernized countries can be made obese very quickly on a western diet is not easy to refute.

It seems that food intake stops when we feel we have had enough and that we feel satisfied sooner on foods rich in dietary fibre – i.e. unrefined carbohydrate foods. It is simply so easy to over-consume refined foods that have no appetite-controlling capacity that we in the West eat ourselves to obesity.

*58/72/5*

FEED YOUR BODY RIGHT: SAVE NOW, SPLURGE LATER

Mary Adams longed for a way to enjoy the goodies at parties and holiday dinners without exceeding her 1,200-calorie-a-day limit. “I read that the average Thanksgiving dinner has more calories than I eat in an entire day,” says the 48-year-old Denver resident, who was restricting calories to slim down her 286-pound frame.

Friends suggested that she try snacking on something before special eating events, but Mary doubted that would work for her. She feared that she’d eat beforehand and then indulge anyway, doubling her potential for gaining, rather than losing, weight. So she came up with the idea of banking calories.

“I realized that if I ate only 300 calories during the day, I’d have 900 left for dinner. I could eat what I wanted and not go over my calorie goal,” she explains. “The trick was to find foods that would fill me up on the fewest calories.” So she started checking her calorie counter for filling but low-cal foods. Among her choices were light J bread, light cereal, tiny graham crackers, carrots, celery sprinkled *i with chili powder, sugar-free Jell-O, and lots of water. ?

Like someone squirreling away money from every paycheck to buy an expensive coat or a new stereo system”, Mary saves up calories so she can splurge on food at special events. “When my office “* planned a big holiday dinner, I saved 100 calories a day for 10 days,” she says. “I was able to go to the dinner, sample all the great foods, and not worry about overindulging!”

Since establishing her personal calorie account in 1998, Mary has dropped 112 pounds. And she plans on using calorie banking to get to her 135-pound goal. She’s banking on making it.

WINNING ACTION

Save, save, save, then splurge. While this tactic may not work for everyone, Mary found her own way to enjoy party foods without ruining her weight-loss efforts. As I say in my Ten Commandments of Weight Loss on page 1, slimming down doesn’t have to mean giving up on all of the fun. You just have to find a way to do both. Give Mary’s method a try to see if it works for you.

*51\89\8*